Future. Amazonian Portraits

The Amazon is a resonant, historical, poetic, political, conflictual, and immeasurable landscape. Not a single entity but a variety of different entities. It is the region of the Indigenous and mestizo, colonies, myths, legends of gold and jaguars, stories of rubber and coca, guerrillas, and isolated communities. Amazonia is total resistance against extraction of anything from this vulnerable ecosystem. It is also relentless advance of corporations, the tales of violence, and endless wars. The history of the Amazon region is the story of struggles, claims, power battles, revaluations and projections, persecution, disappearance of entire nations and languages, and radical contempt. But in the Amazon, people also sing, paint, celebrate, and live together: with trees, fire, roots, exotic and mundane, river, death, ceremonies, collective, darkness, dreams, magic, the earth, grandparents, myths, history, childhood, art, food, and festivals. The peoples of the Amazon project themselves into the future as they see and recognize themselves in their pasts, in their own accumulated knowledge. The Amazon regions are a commitment to the future as they are in constant and active dialog with nature. Here environmental protection is not an imperative necessity or some random slogan, but a way of life, a way of existence. The series "Future. Amazonian Portraits" by the Argentinian theater and performance director Lisandro Rodríguez, commissioned by CULTURESCAPES 2021 Amazonia, is a partial and unfinished project that focuses on twelve artists whose works are influenced by Amazonia and who address various aspects of the Amazon. They have taken this opportunity to tell their stories and share with us their views and perspectives. With:  Soema Montenegro, Argentina Roger Neyra Luzuriaga, Peru Grecia Albán, Ecuador Diego Aramburo, Bolivia Andreia Duarte, Brazil Carlos Gutierrez Quiroga, Bolivia Gabriela Da Cunha, Brazil Heidi Abderhalden, Colombia María Thaís, Brazil Andrea Flores, Brazil Christian Bendayán, Peru Teto Ocampo, Colombia